Fifty Words for Embarrassment

I opened the door. “Hey, Rhea,” Lionel said. His posture was off. He was hunched over a little, ducking his chin down but meeting my eyes through what I hoped was a great display of bravery.

I put my hand on the doorway and leaned against it, hoping that this would keep him from noticing my tremors. “Hi. Do you want to come in for a minute?”

Reed appeared in the doorway. He paused upon laying eyes on his brother but did not hesitate very long before charging- yes, absolutely it could only be described as charging- over to us. “What are you here for?” he demanded. I put my hand on Reed’s arm, hoping that he would understand that I didn’t want any violence. I remembered the black eye that Lionel had given Reed once because Reed had hurt me. I got chills, though I don’t know whether it was from remembering how caring Lionel had acted toward me or from the knowledge that sometimes these boys did settle their feuds through mild violence.

“Lionel, come in,” I insisted, stepping further into the living room so that he had room to enter. Lionel looked wary but he did come in.

“You mind giving us a minute?” he asked, looking to his brother.

Reed folded his arms. “Absolutely not. Go on and talk to Rhea if you really feel you need to, but you will say nothing you don’t want me hearing.” Lionel darted a glance in my direction. I frowned but nodded.

“Fine. Look, Rhea, I was out of line yesterday,” Lionel began. Reed snorted in derision and loped over to the couch, collapsing onto it with surprising grace.

I shot Reed a glare. Didn’t he know that I wanted to clear the air between me and Lionel? I wasn’t convinced that it was possible, but I was determined to try. “Yeah, you were,” I agreed.

Lionel sighed. He linked his arm with mine and guided me over to the other couch, easing me down and sitting next to me. The gesture was a familiar one; he often showed me little flashes of gentlemanly behavior like this. Maybe that was what made everything that he had said yesterday such a shock to me. I didn’t know whether his doing it now made me feel comforted or more upset. “I talked to Grant again last night- he’s the one who told me about Liesl to begin with-”

“What?” I cut him off. “Grant? Grant Peterlin?” Oh, this explained so much.

Lionel was, in a word, perplexed. “Yeah, Grant Peterlin. What is it?”

“He’s a dunderhead, that’s what. Really, Lionel, you got your information from him? It’s no wonder that you were so far off-base. I can’t believe this! No, that’s a lie. I have absolutely no trouble believing it. After the hell that he made middle school for me, of course he’s been going around spreading rumors now. He probably thought that he was humiliating me. I’ll bet that he doesn’t realize there are worse things than teenage pregnancy.” Oh, just wait until I told Florence about this. I wondered whether she would be angrier than me. I wondered if it was possible to be.

Lionel gaped at me. “I thought you said that Liesl wasn’t your daughter.”

“Aw, get your jaw off of the floor. Of course she wasn’t. She was a precious little girl that we watched sometimes. We still exchange Christmas cards with her poor mother. That’s all, Lionel. And do you know what? I really don’t like to talk about it. I don’t like to think about Liesl. It still hurts. It was so hard, watching her go through her sickness.”

Lionel bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Rhea.”

I leaned back against the couch, momentarily exhausted even though the day had barely started yet. “You know,” I said conversationally, “if you wanted to keep your brother away from people who are messed up, you might have tried looking a little closer to home first.” I glanced sidelong at Lionel, smiling a little bit.

He snorted. The room was engulfed in silence for a long moment. Then Lionel drew in a deep breath. “Gus kept me up all last night, Rhea. He wouldn’t leave my house. He kept insisting that I go and see you right away, even though it was the middle of the night. I’ve never seen him so worried and you know how he can be.”

Lionel was referring to the anxiety that always seemed to be just under Gus’ exuberant demeanor. Worry was something that was not uncommon for our dearest Gus. He must have been absolutely panicked just then. I frowned and pulled out my phone. “Don’t think that you’re fully forgiven yet,” I warned. “You’ve got to work for that.” Then I pulled up Gus’ number and hit the “call” button.

He answered on the first ring. “Rhea! Did Lionel talk to you? Are you quitting the band? Did you-”

“Gus,” I snapped. He shut up immediately. “Stop worrying and get some sleep, would you? No one’s leaving the band.”

Lionel tackled me as soon as the words left my mouth. “Rhea, you’re the best,” he said, yanking on my braid affectionately. I shoved him off of me, laughing.

Gus, meanwhile, was talking faster than I could keep up with. “Hey, Gus. I really meant it when I said that I want you to get some sleep. Lionel mentioned that you had a rough night.”

“Not as rough as yours,” Gus protested. “You go sleep.”

I rolled my eyes. “Goodbye, Gus,” I said. I hung up and turned to Lionel. “You do realize what this means, yeah?”

“What?” His expression shifted into what I felt was an appropriate level of apprehension.

“Punishment.” Reed barked out a laugh from the other couch. I guess that he finally felt like he was allowed to intrude on what had been a rather personal conversation because he came over and sat on the arm of the sofa that I was on, resting his hand on my shoulder.

Lionel’s eyes bugged and I surprised myself with with the wicked laugh that escaped me. “Oh, yes. And I’m not letting you off easily. You’re going to be opening our next show solo with nothing but Rupert accompanying you on acoustic guitar. Tell me, Lionel, have you ever watched the Vlogbrothers on Youtube?”

“Yeah, of course. They’re fantastic.” Lionel didn’t look like he thought anything about this conversation was fantastic.

“Have you happened to see a particular video in which Hank is punished? Specifically the one where he sings the song ‘World Wide Web Girl?’” Lionel blanched and I couldn’t help myself; I burst out laughing.

“Rhea, no,” he pleaded.

“Oh, yes. You do this for me and I’ll forgive you completely. Of course you’ll have to let me pick out your outfit that day... and Florence will be doing your hair. I think he would look adorable in pigtails, don’t you, Reed?” Reed at his point was a quivering mess of withheld laughter.

“You’re going to let your girl do this to me, bro?” Lionel said. All the fight had gone out of him, though. I knew better than to say it to Lionel, but him calling me Reed’s girl went further toward gaining my forgiveness than his fulfillment of any punishment ever could.

Reed’s eyes briefly met mine. “I couldn’t think of a better punishment,” he said. I grinned at him. “Now, Lionel, we were actually in the middle of breakfast. I recommend that you go and start learning the song, yeah? Our next show’s on Saturday. That isn’t very much time to prepare.”

Lionel took his cue and stood to leave. “I’m sorry again, Rhea. I should have trusted you. I just didn’t want Reed to... Well, you know. I didn’t want to see him lose himself again. It was hard enough the first time. We only just got him back when you showed up. Everything I said yesterday has been building up since I first met you. I wanted so badly to hate you, Rhea, and I was angry that you made it so hard to.”

I was tempted to say that he didn’t have to explain anymore, but I bit back the words. I knew that he did. I didn’t tell him that I understood either, because really, I didn’t. Nothing should make you so cruel to someone you counted as a friend, I didn’t care what the situation was. So instead of giving him any of the usual responses I had for apologies, I gave him a wan smile and said, “I’ll catch you later, Lionel. Practice tomorrow night, seven o’clock?”

Lionel frowned. “Actually, can we make it seven thirty? It turns out I have a song to learn with Rupert.”

I crossed my arms, pretending to be menacing. “Nope. That comes out of your time, not the band’s.” Lionel held up his hands in surrender, gave me one final wave, and left.

I turned to Reed. “You’ve been awfully quiet,” I commented.

His arms came around me. I leaned in closer and inhaled the scent of him. He always smelled so clean. “I was really just there to make sure he didn’t hurt you again. That was between you guys. I’m glad you’re trying to make it work with him. He’s a good kid, you know? Just a little misguided sometimes. I’m not saying what he said to you yesterday was okay, because it wasn’t-”

I understood Reed completely so I didn’t count it as too much of a loss when I stopped the flow of words by pressing my lips to his. “Hey, don’t worry about it.” I felt Reed’s smile rather than saw it, and that made me smile too. I pulled away. “Come on, our food must be nastily cold by now. We should go see if anything’s salvageable.”

Reed groaned but he followed me into the kitchen nonetheless. “Still think Flo’s going to be disappointed?”

I spun around and wrapped my arms around him again, pressing my chest to his. I leaned in and kissed one cheek, then the other, and pulled away. Reed groaned. “No way,” I told him firmly. “Pants or no pants, this is going to make a great story.”

***

It was midday. I had just gotten home from an intense orchestra rehearsal and band practice was in three hours. Florence had just gotten back from a ten hour shift at her waitressing job. What I would like you to take from this information is that the two of us were tired and overstimulated so we were relaxing. Every light in our apartment was off and soft jazz was drifting through the house, punctuated by occasional thunderclaps that only added to the calm atmosphere that Flo and I had going. We had collapsed on the floor some time ago. We were only just moving on from grunting to saying actual words to each other when a knock sounded at the door.

Florence and I immediately looked at each other. “It’s probably for you, Flo,” I said, hoping that she would get up so that I didn’t have to.

Florence frowned. “Nope, I’m not expecting anyone. Your friends are the ones who drop in unexpectedly.” What neither of us bothered pointing out was that almost all of our friends were mutual and that almost all of them were the sort to drop by unexpectedly, assuming that at least one of us would be here.

I groaned and flexed a bit. Whoever it was knocked again, more insistently this time. “Fine, I’m coming!” I shouted. It cut off abruptly. I kicked my legs up and used the momentum to roll to my feet. It wasn’t pretty and Florence laughed at me. “Hey,” I said in what was meant to be a far more menacing tone than it was, “You don’t get to laugh. You’re being more pathetic than me right now.”

I threw open the door. “Reed!” I launched myself into his arms, pressing close. I hadn’t seen him in the past five days. He and Lionel had gone down to Virginia to visit their aunt. Things had been pretty sad for me without practices and without Reed. “You weren’t supposed to be back until later!”

Reed chuckled. “Trust me, you would have left a little early too. Aunt Louisa is stifling.” Reed’s expression shifted. “Besides, I missed you.”

I gave Reed my sweetest smile and whispered, “I missed you too.” I yanked Reed into the apartment and flicked on the lights.

Florence gave a loud, wordless shout of protest, followed by, “Don’t tell me this is the kind of company I have to sit up for. I won’t do it. I refuse, do you hear me Rhea Sophia?”

Reed glanced at me, amused. “Your middle name is Sophia?”

I rolled my eyes and assumed a typical stance of defense- you know, arms crossed, shoulders hunched, head down. “Yeah. My mum thought that the rhyming was cute.”

Reed patted the top of my head. “It’s adorable.” His hand ran down my spine, coming to rest on my lower back. He guided me further into the living room so that we could see Florence, who, despite her vehement protest, was sitting up and rubbing groggily at her face- a face that lit up the instant that she saw Reed.

“Rhea, why didn’t you tell me it was Reed? I would have gotten up for Reed!” Florence hurried over and hugged him. I smiled. It was nice to see them getting along so well. For a while there things had been rough. Our front door opened again, shut. Flo and I exchanged perplexed glances.

“Oh, that’s Marcus. We drove together. He had a call to make before coming up,” Reed explained. Florence’s face lit up, her smile growing in an instant. I smiled too, pleased that she was so happy. Now that I knew that Caleb hadn’t really been her boyfriend for all of those years, I realized just how little relationship experience she had. My theory was that her big personality was a little intimidating. If I was a guy I would have been intimidated by her, that was for certain. Florence left the room in a hurry, her short blonde curls bouncing as she went.

“She’s so cute,” I said to Reed.

He rolled his eyes. “Hey, do you want to go for a walk?” Reed never had been very good at coming up with ways to transition from one talk to another.

A burst of thunder made my skepticism at the idea seem a little like overkill, but I nonetheless replied, “In this weather?”

Reed looked a little sheepish. “What about if we run to that park across the street? The one with the gazebo?”

“Why can’t we stay here in the dry?” I asked, eyeing Reed closely. He was a little jittery today. It probably meant nothing, I knew that. After all, he had spent all day in a car. The most likely explanation was that it was just pent up energy.

Now Reed looked pained. “I want to talk with you, Rhea. Alone.” The front door opened again and shut with a loud crack.

I walked over to it and looked around. “Flo? Marcus?” I called just to be certain that they had both left. Then I looked at Reed, who had followed me. “Looks like we’re alone. What did you want to talk about?”

Reed’s brow puckered. “Why don’t we make some tea? Then we’ll talk.” I shrugged. We headed into the kitchen. Not a word was said while I washed out the kettle and set water on to boil, nor did either of us speak when I pulled out two cups and saucers and two tea bags- mint for me and chamomile for him. I wasn’t offering any other kind, since he really looked like he could use a little calming down.

“Well, why don’t you tell me about your trip?” I finally said to break the silence. Don’t get me wrong, I was genuinely interested in his trip, but... well, the priority just then was to say something, anything, to cut this tension.

Reed instantly relaxed. “In fact, we had a really good time. I mean, she dragged us to museum after museum and made us take a day trip to D.C. that involved leaving at five in the morning to make good time, but it was totally worth it.”

“Aw. And I bet Lionel was excited for the chance to see the Lincoln Memorial,” I said. Lionel was a major history buff. His favorite time period to study was the civil war. How did I know this? It was one of the few things that he would talk about incessantly, the others being Pokemon and music. The kettle started whistling.

Reed grimaced. “You have no idea. It took ages just to get him to leave. You know how there’s writing at the Memorial? Yeah, he not only read it and took pictures, but he started telling everyone around him about it, too.”

I snorted. “Of course he did. And they were all thrilled, I’m sure.”

“Thrilled,” Reed repeated, his voice laced with sarcasm. The kettle started really shrieking and I turned off the burner. That’s as far as I got, though, because just then the door was thrown open and Florence tore through the hallway, flung herself into her room, and slammed the door behind her. I exchanged glances with Reed.

“I’m checking on her,” I told him and ran down the hall.